Comprehensive Analysis Crushes

100% Renewable Energy Fantasy

While fully accepting the perspective that fossil fuel energy production and consumption must be dramatically reduced to save the planet from dangerous CO2-induced global warming, four Australian researchers have compiled a comprehensive rebuke of the premise that renewable energies (wind, solar, biomass, etc.) can feasibly supplant fossil fuels to become the dominant power source for the world.

The authors’ analysis zeroes in on the devastating conclusion that each and every one of the 24 previous attempts to substantiate the claim that a 100% renewable energy grid is achievable have failed to satisfy even the most basic feasibility criteria.

Further, a commitment to all-renewable energy sources means there will need to be a massive and unprecedented increase in grid extensions (for new power distribution systems), as well as realized plans for extreme and unrealistic land-use expansion (for biomass production especially) that would threaten ecosystem preservation, biodiversity, and land conservation efforts.

From a humanitarian standpoint, it is conceded that attempts to “decarbonize” energy sources seriously hampers efforts to provide electricity generation to the world’s most impoverished people. In fact, Heard and colleagues conclude that a commitment to renewable-only energy supplies “appears diametrically opposed to [the] eradication of poverty … and social justice for indigenous people.”

Again, these damning conclusions have been advanced by researchers avidly committed to reducing or eliminating fossil fuel energy production for the sake of mitigating global warming. And yet even staunch renewable energy advocates cannot find a way to substantiate the claim that 100% renewable power generation is feasible.

A very brief summation of the highlights from the analysis — as well as the link to the full paper — is provided below.

Burden Of Proof: A Comprehensive Review Of The

Feasibility Of 100% Renewable-Electricity Systems

“While many modelled scenarios have been published claiming to show that a 100% renewable electricity system is achievable, there is no empirical or historical evidence that demonstrates that such systems are in fact feasible. Of the studies published to date, 24 have forecast regional, national or global energy requirements at sufficient detail to be considered potentially credible. We critically review these studies using four novel feasibility criteria for reliable electricity systems needed to meet electricity demand this century. [N]one of the 24 studies provides convincing evidence that these basic feasibility criteria can be met. Of a maximum possible unweighted feasibility score of seven, the highest score for any one study was four. … On the basis of this review, efforts to date seem to have substantially underestimated the challenge and delayed the identification and implementation of effective and comprehensive decarbonization pathways.”

“[E]conomic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries is crucially dependent on energy availability. A reduction in primary energy is an unlikely pathway to achieve these humanitarian goals. To move beyond subsistence economies, developing nations must accumulate the necessary infrastructure materially concentrated around cement and steel. That energy-intensive process likely brings with it a minimum threshold of energy intensity for development. Across a collation of 20 separately modelled scenarios of primary energy for both India and China, Blanford et al. found a range of energy-growth pathways from approximately +50 to +200% from 2005 to 2030. None of those scenarios analyzed for these two countries — with a combined population of almost 2.5 billion people — suggested static or reduced primary energy consumption.”

“The remaining feasibility gaps lie in the largely ignored, yet essential requirements for expanded transmission and enhanced distribution systems, both to transport electricity from more sources over greater distances, and to maintain stable system operations. Fürsch et al. suggested that a cost-optimized transmission network to meet a target of 80% renewables in Europe by 2050 would demand an additional 228,000 km of transmission grid extensions, a +76% addition compared to the base network. … Rodríguez et al. [83] concluded that to obtain 98% of the potential benefit of grid integration for renewables would require long-distance interconnector capacities that are 5.7 times larger than current capacities. Becker et al. found that an optimal four-fold increase in today’s transmission capacity would need to be installed in the thirty years from 2020 to 2050. An expansion of that scale is no mere detail to be ignored.”

“Perhaps our most concerning finding relates to the dependence of 100% renewable scenarios on biomass. The British scenario is a typical example; even with the assumption of a 54% reduction in primary energy consumption, biomass requires 4.1 million ha [hectares] of land to be committed to the growing of grasses, short-rotation forestry and coppice crops (17% of UK land area). … The WWF scenario demanded up to 250 million ha [hectares] for biomass production for energy, along with another 4.5 billion m3 of biomass from existing production forests to meet a scenario of an absolute reduction in primary energy from today.”

“[I]n applying so many assumptions to deliver changes far beyond historical precedents, the failure in any or several of these assumptions regarding energy efficiency, electrification or flexible load would nullify the proposed supply system. As such, these systems present a fragile pathway, being conceived to power scenarios that do not exist and likely never will.”

1. “To date, efforts to assess the viability of 100% renewable systems, taking into account aspects such as financial cost, social acceptance, pace of roll-out, land use, and materials consumption, have substantially underestimated the challenge of excising fossil fuels from our energy supplies. This desire to push the 100%-renewable ideal without critical evaluation has ironically delayed the identification and implementation of effective and comprehensive decarbonization pathways. We argue that the early exclusion of other forms of technology from plans to decarbonize the global electricity supply is unsupportable, and arguably reckless.”

2. “The realization of 100% renewable electricity (and energy more broadly) appears diametrically opposed to other critical sustainability issues such as eradication of poverty, land conservation and reduced ecological footprints, reduction in air pollution, preservation of biodiversity, and social justice for indigenous people.”

3. “The evidence from these studies for the proposition of 100% renewable electricity must therefore be heavily discounted, modified or discarded.”

While fully accepting the perspective that fossil fuel energy production and consumption must be dramatically reduced to save the planet from dangerous CO2-induced global warming, … [because if we didn’t include that disclaimer our research grants would probably be cut off] … four Australian researchers have compiled a comprehensive rebuke of the premise that renewable energies (wind, solar, biomass, etc.) can ever supplant fossil fuels to become the dominant power source for the world.

Without my edit it is hard to see how those two concepts can be reconciled in the same sentence. Either fossil fuel use must be curtailed or renewables can never become dominant.

The only third option is that we finally give in to the enviro-nutters objective of sending us back to their seventeenth century “Golden Age” (joke!). No thanks.

” four Australian researchers have compiled a comprehensive rebuke of the premise that renewable energies (wind, solar, biomass, etc.) can ever supplant fossil fuels to become the dominant power source for the world.”

the paper does not say this. If i missed anything, please provide a citation.

There is a huge difference between a 100% solution and being the dominant power source.

Especially as their criteria are pretty strict:

“Criterion 2: The proposed supply of electricity must be
simulated/calculated to be capable of meeting the real-time demand
for electricity for any given year, together with an additional back-up
margin, to within regulated reliability limits, in all plausible climatic
conditions”

Nuclear just totally failed this test in japan, after a minor Tsunami climate condition…

Modification: ”four Australian researchers have compiled a comprehensive rebuke of the premise that renewable energies (wind, solar, biomass, etc.) can feasibly supplant fossil fuels to become the dominant power source for the world.”

“… there is no empirical or historical evidence that demonstrates that such systems are in fact feasible.”
“[N]one of the 24 studies provides convincing evidence that these basic feasibility criteria can be met.”

“There is a huge difference between a 100% solution and being the dominant power source.”

Despite all the growth in renewables in the last few decades, coal’s percentage of the energy supply has not budged. In other words, renewables have not only not even begun to come close to becoming a dominant energy source, they haven’t even displaced a single percentage of the world’s fossil fuel energy supply:

Gigawatt-hours (GWh) from fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil) grew from 5.8 GWh in 1980 to 15.4 GWh in 2012. Gigawatt-hours from renewables rose from 1.8 GWh in 1980 to 4.8 GWh in 2012. This means that total consumption of fossil fuel energies grew more than 3 times faster (9.6 GWh to 3 GWh) than renewables did between 1980 and 2012.

“Modification: ”four Australian researchers have compiled a comprehensive rebuke of the premise that renewable energies (wind, solar, biomass, etc.) can feasibly supplant fossil fuels to become the dominant power source for the world.””

the modification is still simply wrong. The term “feasibly” is used in the text also only while talking about a 100% solution.

We will see renewables being the dominant power pretty soon in multiple regions and whole countries. getting to 100% (for 100% of the time) is a completely different thing.

“Do you understand, sod, that when more renewables are added to the grid, more fossil fuel energy systems will eventually have to be built too (due to intermittent and unreliable supply)? ”

This claim is also simply false. The old fossil fuel plants can provide backup for quite some time. we might need a couple of extra gas plants as backup and it might be a good idea to invest in small combined gas plants as well.

” In other words, renewables have not only not even begun to come close to becoming a dominant energy source, they haven’t even displaced a single percentage of the world’s fossil fuel energy supply:”

that is a statistical artefact caused by the huge expansion of electricity production, mostly in China.

Your data is old (the article from 2015, the data even from 2012). In the real world, even EIA is seeing coal as flat at best.

We will see renewables being the dominant power pretty soon in multiple regions and whole countries. getting to 100% (for 100% of the time) is a completely different thing.

sod, this “completely different thing” is entirely the point. You’re arguing over symbolism rather than substance.

To reduce global-scale CO2 emissions, renewables will need to displace fossil fuels on a global-scale. And even though renewables have grown exponentially in the last few decades, absolute fossil fuel production and consumption have grown right along with them — tripling between 1980 and 2012 — meaning that the percentage of world fossil fuel energy consumed is no different now than it was before renewables boomed. So even if there are countries that have gone “100% renewable”, it won’t matter if this doesn’t actually reduce absolute fossil fuel production and consumption on a global scale. And it hasn’t. Not even close.

“China is cancelling real plants, even those that are already being build.”

And they’re replacing plans for new coal plants with a massive increase in another fossil fuel: natural gas.
—http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL4N1G232M
“China’s natural gas production will surge by about a quarter to 170 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2017 from 136.8 bcm in 2016, estimates from the National Energy Administration showed on Friday.”
—
And coal production has not been reduced in China either.
—
“China is still likely to produce 3.65 billion tonnes of coal this year, the agency said – up slightly from 3.64 billion in 2016.”
—http://www.shanghaidaily.com/business/energy/Output-of-shale-and-natural-gas-rises/shdaily.shtml
“CHINA’S shale gas production surged in March while natural gas output also expanded, indicating improved energy structure as the country shifts away from reliance on traditional energy sources. Shale gas output jumped 50.4 percent year on year to 1.15 billion cubic meters in March, according to National Bureau of Statistics data yesterday. In the first quarter, shale gas output surged 17.4 percent year on year to 2.67 billion cubic meters. The fast growth was fueled by increased production by the Changning-Weiyuan national-level shale gas pilot zone in Sichuan Province, run by China National Petroleum Corp.”
—

“The problem with your article is simple: There are massive changes and an article from 2015 simply does not capture the situation today.”

sod, the NYT article you cited is exactly 13 months “newer” than the UK Times article I cited.

sod, just because there has been a reduction in the number of coal plants in plans to be built in China and a few other places doesn’t mean the growth has stopped everywhere. And it also doesn’t mean that existing coal plants will just disappear because they’re “dead”. They’re still in operation, and their numbers have risen exponentially across the world in the last 15 years or so.

I’m not a fan of coal. I much prefer natural gas. It’s cleaner. That’s the fuel of the future. It’s the reason coal plants have shuttered in the US.

“sod, just because there has been a reduction in the number of coal plants in plans to be built in China and a few other places doesn’t mean the growth has stopped everywhere.”

The change is global. And massive. If 50% of your business just got cancelled, you are in deep trouble.

if 60% of plants under construction gets cancelled, your business is dead. What will happen to the rest of the planned stuff, if even stuff under construction gets stopped? It is just paper work, waiting to get dropped before any more money is invested.

So, some nuclear advocates suggest that 100% renewable energy supply is not feasible without considering nuclear power generation. Surprise suprise.

If nuclear would not be as expensive as it is, waste disposal would be a solved issue and if nuclear would be capable to supply peak power, we all could agree that this should be the way to go … but that’s not the case, unfortunately.

And of course everything is lacking when you make assumptions about the future. If you could implement a perfect 100% renewable power generation scheme with todays technology and prices it would have already been implemented.

I guess we’ll see what pathways mankind takes. The first 40% renewables are easy, now comes the hard part (as soon as renewables start providing more than 100% of electricity several hours a year).

SebastianH: “It must be hard to ignore all evidence that contradicts your world view …”

Oh, the irony…

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160323152508.htm#.VvkQjt-fbkw.twitterEfforts to curtail world temps will almost surely failThe Texas A&M researchers modelled the projected growth in global population and per capita energy consumption, as well as the size of known reserves of oil, coal and natural gas, and greenhouse gas emissions to determine just how difficult it will be to achieve the less-than-2 degree Celsius warming goal. “It would require rates of change in our energy infrastructure and energy mix that have never happened in world history and that are extremely unlikely to be achieved,” explains Jones. “Just considering wind power, we found that it would take an annual installation of 485,000 5-megawatt wind turbines by 2028. The equivalent of about 13,000 were installed in 2015. That’s a 37-fold increase in the annual installation rate in only 13 years to achieve just the wind power goal,” adds Jones. Similar expansion rates are needed for other renewable energy sources. “To even come close to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, 50 percent of our energy will need to come from renewable sources by 2028, and today it is only 9 percent, including hydropower. For a world that wants to fight climate change, the numbers just don’t add up to do it.”
—
Moriarty and Honnery, 2016http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151630088XHighlights: We argue it is unlikely that RE [renewable energy] can meet existing global energy use.
Fossil fuels face resource depletion, supply security, and climate change problems; renewable energy (RE) may offer the best prospects for their long-term replacement. However, RE sources differ in many important ways from fossil fuels, particularly in that they are energy flows rather than stocks. The most important RE sources, wind and solar energy, are also intermittent, necessitating major energy storage as these sources increase their share of total energy supply. We show that estimates for the technical potential of RE vary by two orders of magnitude, and argue that values at the lower end of the range must be seriously considered, both because their energy return on energy invested falls, and environmental costs rise, with cumulative output. Finally, most future RE output will be electric, necessitating radical reconfiguration of existing grids to function with intermittent RE.
—
Ferroni and Hopkirk, 2016http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516301379Abstract: Many people believe renewable energy sources to be capable of substituting fossil or nuclear energy. However there exist very few scientifically sound studies, which apply due diligence to substantiating this impression. … The main reasons are due to the fact that on one hand, solar electricity is very material-intensive, labour-intensive and capital-intensive and on the other hand the solar radiation exhibits a rather low power density.

Conclusion: [A]n electrical supply system based on today’s PV technologies cannot be termed an energy source, but rather a non-sustainable energy sink … [I]t has become clear that photovoltaic energy at least will not help in any way to replace the fossil fuel.
—
Kelly, 2016http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=10333234&fulltextType=RV&fileId=S2329222916000039The growth of the ecological footprint of a human population about to increase from 7B now to 9B in 2050 raises serious concerns about how to live both more efficiently and with less permanent impacts on the finite world. One present focus is the future of our climate, where the level of concern has prompted actions across the world in mitigation of the emissions of CO2. An examination of successful and failed introductions of technology over the last 200 years generates several lessons that should be kept in mind as we proceed to 80% decarbonize the world economy by 2050. I will argue that all the actions taken together until now to reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide will not achieve a serious reduction, and in some cases, they will actually make matters worse.
—
Lomborg, 2016http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1758-5899.12295/fullAll climate policies by the US, China, the EU and the rest of the world, implemented from the early 2000s to 2030 and sustained through the century will likely reduce global temperature rise about 0.17°C in 2100. These impact estimates are robust to different calibrations of climate sensitivity, carbon cycling and different climate scenarios. Current climate policy promises will do little to stabilize the climate and their impact will be undetectable for many decades.

I’ll continue to quote peer-reviewed scientific papers, sod. You are free to call papers that you don’t like, or that don’t support your beliefs, “garbage”. I guess this is the best “rebuttal” you can muster.

Others don’t seem to think it is “insane” to suggest that PV use could be an energy sink at some point…

Louwen et al., 2016https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13728A fast growth of installed PV capacity could result in the creation of an energy sink, as the PV industry could embed energy in PV systems at a rate outpaced by these system’s ability to deliver it back. The same can be true for GHG emissions, when the production of PV systems releases more GHG emissions than the electricity produced with PV can offset by replacing more GHG intensive electricity. Although there is evidence that shows that CED and GHG emissions are correlated, this is not necessarily the case.

To avoid the creation of an energy and/or GHG sink, in general, the growth of the industry should be limited by 1/PBT, where PBT (payback time) is the time in which upfront investments in either CED or GHG emissions are paid back. However, energy and GHG sinks from periods of growth exceeding 1/PBT can be offset by decreased growth rates (or decreasing PBT) in later stages. Thus, the dynamics of growth need to be taken into account, rather than always aiming for a 1/PBT limited growth, as is discussed by Emmott et al. The concept of the PV industry as an energy sink, and more recently GHG sink is well known in the PV community. Grimmer et al. have been one of the first to address this issue in terms of energy, stating that to maximise the (positive) impact of solar technologies, they should have short energy payback time (EPBT) and long lifetime. When the growth of the PV industry started to accelerate, others indicated the necessity of strong decreases in energy payback time.

“A fast growth of installed PV capacity could result in the creation of an energy sink, as the PV industry could embed energy in PV systems at a rate outpaced by these system’s ability to deliver it back.”

this is a completely different problem. It is rather typical that new energy technologies can not cover the full energy need to produce them. Not new, not a big problem.

“I am looking forward to stand together with you, demanding that the poor shall not carry the cost of changes to electricity systems.”

They already are. Do you care?

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bj-rn-lomborg-says-that-the-prevailing-solution-to-global-warming-is-hurting-the-poor-more-than-the-problem-is“Forcing everyone to buy more expensive, less reliable energy pushes up costs throughout the economy, leaving less for other public goods. The average of macroeconomic models indicates that the total cost of the EU’s climate policy will be €209 billion ($280 billion) per year from 2020 until the end of the century. The burden of these policies falls overwhelmingly on the world’s poor, because the rich can easily pay more for their energy. I am often taken aback by well-meaning and economically comfortable environmentalists who cavalierly suggest that gasoline prices should be doubled or electricity exclusively sourced from high-cost green sources. That may go over well in affluent Hunterdon County, New Jersey, where residents reportedly spend just 2% of their income on gasoline. But the poorest 30% of the US population spend almost 17% of their after-tax income on gasoline.”

“Similarly, environmentalists boast that households in the United Kingdom have reduced their electricity consumption by almost 10% since 2005. But they neglect to mention that this reflects a 50% increase in electricity prices, mostly to pay for an increase in the share of renewables from 1.8% to 4.6%.The poor, no surprise, have reduced their consumption by much more than 10%, whereas the rich have not reduced theirs at all. Over the past five years, heating a UK home has become 63% more expensive, while real wages have declined. Some 17% of households are now energy poor – that is, they have to spend more than 10% of their income on energy; and, because elderly people are typically poorer, about a quarter of their households are energy poor. Deprived pensioners burn old books to keep warm, because they are cheaper than coal, they ride on heated buses all day, and a third leave part of their homes cold. In Germany, where green subsidies will cost €23.6 billion this year, household electricity prices have increased by 80% since 2000, causing 6.9 million households to live in energy poverty. Wealthy homeowners in Bavaria can feel good about their inefficient solar panels, receiving lavish subsidies essentially paid by poor tenants in the Ruhr, who cannot afford their own solar panels but still have to pay higher electricity costs.”

Why would a 100% renewable power generation that would be cost effective hamper any efforts? What kind of poverty are you talking about when you refer to your unlikely scenario to lift millions out of poverty by building a fossile fuel power plant somewhere … Who would be able to actually use that electricity in the really poor regions of this planet? Why would that be a better first solution compared to a solar panel and a few batteries?

I really don’t get why renewables would increase poverty or slow down improvements?

“Why would a 100% renewable power generation that would be cost effective hamper any efforts?”

Because renewables are intermittent, dependent upon the Sun shining or the wind blowing, have a low power density, and their output per energy unit is extremely costly relative to fossil fuel energies. That’s why…
—http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/our-high-energy-planet“A recent analysis from the Center for Global Development, for instance, estimates that if $10 billion were invested in renewable energy technology in sub-Saharan Africa, then 30 million would gain access to electricity. If the same amount of money was given to gas-fired generation, it would supply around 90 million – or three times as many people.”
—http://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/maximizing-access-energy-opic_1.pdf“We conservatively estimate that more than 60 million additional people in poor nations could gain access to electricity if the Overseas Private Investment Corporation were allowed to invest in natural gas projects, not just renewables.”
—
Of course, you, as you drive around in your Mercedes, would prefer to leave 60 million people without electricity in Africa due to your beliefs about renewables.

“you refer to your unlikely scenario to lift millions out of poverty by building a fossile fuel power plant somewhere”

I have never referred to lifting millions out of poverty by builiding a fossil fuel power plant somewhere. Once again, you have dishonestly made up a statement that I never made and claimed that I wrote it or thought it. Does the dishonesty never stop, SebastianH?
—http://www.springer.com/us/book/9789400749870[G]lobal warming cannot easily be avoided by reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions in rich countries. Not only is emissions reduction extremely difficult in rich countries, but demands such as the UN mandate to improve the lives of the poorest global citizens cannot be satisfied without significantly increasing global energy use, and CO2 emissions. Therefore, the author asserts that climate engineering and adaptation are preferable to mitigation, particularly since the science is less than adequate for making firm statements about the Earth’s future climate.
—http://scroll.in/article/756228/how-climate-change-efforts-by-developed-countries-are-hurting-africas-rural-poorHow climate change efforts by developed countries are hurting Africa’s rural poor
Far from the expected development, forestry plantations and other carbon market initiatives in Uganda have severely compromised ecologies and livelihoods of the local people.
—http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150610111133.htmThe researchers used multiple models to determine the effects of strict emissions cuts and found that many more people would be at risk of hunger than if those cuts weren’t in place.
—

“if $10 billion were invested in renewable energy technology in sub-Saharan Africa, then 30 million would gain access to electricity. If the same amount of money was given to gas-fired generation, it would supply around 90 million – or three times as many people.””

This is a horrible analysis! The main question is, who gets the money!

As most places have neither gas nor the ability to build a gas plant, the money ends abroad and mostly in the hands of big corperations.

With renewables, a lot of the actual work is done in the country by locals and can also be done with lower skills. And after some time the machines are written of and keep producing power, while gas has to be imported all the time.

Obviously, you’ve never read the full analysis. You’ve read 2 sentences, realized it didn’t conform to you presuppositions, and then called it “horrible.”

“With renewables, a lot of the actual work is done in the country by locals and can also be done with lower skills. And after some time the machines are written of and keep producing power, while gas has to be imported all the time.”

Because renewables are intermittent, dependent upon the Sun shining or the wind blowing, have a low power density, and their output per energy unit is extremely costly relative to fossil fuel energies.

And why will any of this be a problem forever?

Intermittency: use storage and/or overprovision

Low power density: we certainly don’t need to cover the whole Earth to generate enough power, do we? 5% of Germany’s area would be enough to power the entire country with solar power … we already know how to cover that much area with tar.

Extremely costly compared to fossil fuels: and that’s where I would strongly disagree. Levelized costs for renewables came pretty close to that for fossil fuels in the last 10 years and there is no reason to believe that it wont become any cheaper in the future. External costs aren’t even included and are certainly much higher for fossil fuels than for renewables.

I have a simulation (one of those feasibility criterions) that is almost ready to be published. The user will be able to manipulate lots of variables and simulate how his energy generation mix would have done in 2016. You’d be surprised how little storage is actually needed to completely cover a year of power usage.

You have the incurable habit of ignoring reality and seizing upon tailored facts. It’s not for nothing that German power rates are among the highest in the world and grid operators continuously have to intervene to keep the frequency in line. Governments are starting to get it as they are cutting back subsidies and are listening to protest groups who are angry about all the blight of the German landscape.

So why is it that citizens of Germany and Denmark pay some of the highest power rates in the world?

You know why. That has nothing to do with future prices of renewables. Some rich nations thought they should finance a faster transition and yes they made some mistakes by not have a cap for those subsidies. It’s not clear by how much these subsidies accelerated the advent of cheap renewables, but it certainly did something.

Other nations decide they should play world police because they can afford it or because they think it’s necessary. Or they build ghost towns with skyscrapers, etc …

Why do so many German citiizens live in energy poverty?

Because of low wages for some jobs? The question is: how can we make sure that everyone can work in a well paying job and not how to make everything cheap enough so the poor can better afford it. Do you think it makes a big difference if someone pays 10 to 20 € less for electricity each month, because it is as cheap as in France? That is literally 2-3 hours of work at minimum wage …

grid operators continuously have to intervene to keep the frequency in line.

And that aper is horrible. They assume a leverage of 5 for gas power, but only 0.5 for renewables. But today investment in renewables is BIGGER than in fossil fuels. So if the leverage is turned upside down, what happens to the result of the report?

At least as bad is their treatment of power cost: they only account for investment, not for the gas (anyone wonder why private companies offer that huge investment leverage, when we do this sort of calculation without the fuel?!?)

SebastianH: “Ethiopia seems to be a bad example, because they already generate more than 90% of their electricity from renewable sources”

Unbelievable. Sebastian, only 20 million Ethiopians have any access to electricity. There are 67 million Ethiopians who have no access to electricity. So yeah, they use renewables in Ethiopia…because almost 80% of Ethiopians burn renewable sticks and dung inside their homes for their “energy”. And that, to you, is a good thing, right?https://www.tesfanews.net/67-million-ethiopians-do-not-have-access-to-electricity/

Most of that “renewable” energy will still come from crop residue, cow manure, wood, and biofuels. While a solar panel can provide energy for a light bulb and a charge for a cell phone, it does little to help run stoves to avoid indoor air pollution or fridges to keep vaccines and food fresh, much less power agriculture and industry.

By 2040, in the IEA’s optimistic scenario, solar power in Sub-Saharan Africa will produce 14kWh per person per year, less than what is needed to keep a single two-watt LED permanently lit. The IEA also estimates that renewable power will still cost more, on average, than any other source – oil, gas, nuclear, coal, or hydro, even with a carbon tax.

Few in the rich world would switch to renewables without heavy subsidies, and certainly no one would cut off their connection to the mostly fossil-fuel-powered grid that provides stable power on cloudy days and at night (another form of subsidy). Yet Western activists seem to believe that the world’s worst-off people should be satisfied with inadequate and irregular electricity supplies.

Why go renewables at all? Apart from being unreliable, variable and expensive there isn’t much evidence that they reduce emissions very much (except possibly as minor components on isolated islands) or where there is abundant hydro installed.
In the meantime forests and agricultural lands are being destroyed to provide palm oil for biofuel and biomass for burning. Killing off animals and increasing the cost of food for the poor.
When it comes to starving africans sod & seb say “Let them eat cake”.

In the meantime forests and agricultural lands are being destroyed to provide palm oil for biofuel and biomass for burning. Killing off animals and increasing the cost of food for the poor. When it comes to starving africans sod & seb say “Let them eat cake”.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160825084633.htmThe researchers conclude that rising biofuel use has been associated with a net increase — rather than a net decrease, as many have claimed — in the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. “When it comes to the emissions that cause global warming, it turns out that biofuels are worse than gasoline,” DeCicco said. “So the underpinnings of policies used to promote biofuels for reasons of climate have now been proven to be scientifically incorrect. “Policymakers should reconsider their support for biofuels. This issue has been debated for many years. What’s new here is that hard data, straight from America’s croplands, now confirm the worst fears about the harm that biofuels do to the planet.”

Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company. The duo were employed at Google on the RERenewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”

Others have pointed out that PV systems can be an energy sink too. Perhaps more name-calling is in order, SebastianH.

Louwen et al., 2016https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13728
A fast growth of installed PV capacity could result in the creation of an energy sink, as the PV industry could embed energy in PV systems at a rate outpaced by these system’s ability to deliver it back. The same can be true for GHG emissions, when the production of PV systems releases more GHG emissions than the electricity produced with PV can offset by replacing more GHG intensive electricity. Although there is evidence that shows that CED and GHG emissions are correlated, this is not necessarily the case.

To avoid the creation of an energy and/or GHG sink, in general, the growth of the industry should be limited by 1/PBT, where PBT (payback time) is the time in which upfront investments in either CED or GHG emissions are paid back. However, energy and GHG sinks from periods of growth exceeding 1/PBT can be offset by decreased growth rates (or decreasing PBT) in later stages. Thus, the dynamics of growth need to be taken into account, rather than always aiming for a 1/PBT limited growth, as is discussed by Emmott et al. The concept of the PV industry as an energy sink, and more recently GHG sink is well known in the PV community. Grimmer et al. have been one of the first to address this issue in terms of energy, stating that to maximise the (positive) impact of solar technologies, they should have short energy payback time (EPBT) and long lifetime. When the growth of the PV industry started to accelerate, others indicated the necessity of strong decreases in energy payback time.

Over and over in the thread,you keep getting countered with published science papers,yet for the most part your replies are hand waving silliness.

I have visited TWO well designed wind power farms at Kittitas Valley,in Washington state where they have periods of time NOT rotating due to NO winds at all. I know because I visit the valley a dozen times a year,driving right by one of the power farms,as it is along the freeway to the top of the hill,where the restrooms are located for the benefit of drivers.

They are intermittent,therefore creates grid instability in the system. While they don’t reduce CO2 emissions,that increases the cost of electricity.

That is some weird logic. Why should intermittency cause instability? Just increase the capacity of interconnectors or use storage, etc. Yes, there is no inertia with those kind of generators (PV included) that could be used for frequency control, but that’s what modern electronics are good for. Or do you think that wind farms miraculously turn the rotors at 50/60 Hz?

That’s not a technical problem at all. The only “feasibility” problem that is currently in existence is costs!

The difficulty associated with integrating variable sources of electricity stems from the fact that the power grid was designed around the concept of large, controllable electric generators. Today, the grid operator uses a three-phase planning process to ensure power plants produce the right amount of electricity at the right time to consistently and reliably meet electric demand. Because the grid has very little storage capacity, the balance between electricity supply and demand must be maintained at all times to avoid a blackout or other cascading problem.

Intermittent renewables are challenging because they disrupt the conventional methods for planning the daily operation of the electric grid. Their power fluctuates over multiple time horizons, forcing the grid operator to adjust its day-ahead, hour-ahead, and real-time operating procedures.”

I think you don’t understand how grid management works. Of course the grid is relatively stable – due to the fact of all the preemptive interventions. We still get very sunny and windy days, where other conventional power plants are idled down and run unprofitably, and wind and solar parks are shut down but get paid anyway and power on the exchanges sell at negative prices. You can argue it how you want, but the system is not efficient. Moreover, the Africans need light at night – when the sun isn’t shining, not in the day when it is.

So you believe you know more science than tens of thousands of publishing climate scientists and the global community of scientists as represented by the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society etc etc etc that more or less state the science is incontrovertible and the evidence unambiguous.

The science is never settled. For example, answer this question with evidence from a peer-reviewed scientific paper: If we were to decrease CO2 concentrations by 10 ppm (-0.00001)over a body of water, by how much would that body of water cool? Cite the controlled scientific experiment that provides an answer to this question, Dennis. Since you believe the science is settled on the impact of CO2 on water temperatures, surely you can produce such results. So let’s see what you have.

Sure the science is settled. Puffing insulation into the atmosphere will cause Earth to retain more energy just as surely as jumping out a window will cause you to fall.

Governments around the world would be amazed and mightily relieved if scientists could show orthodox climate science wrong, that we could continue to burn fossil fuels business-as-usual. A Nobel Prize awaits.

Climate science is complex in that has a great many pieces to put together to make the picture, but each piece is simple enough and although some pieces are a bit rough at the edges the picture is clear.

Despite all these papers you claim show otherwise. That’s why you can’t find one single scientific institution or society to agree with you.

Science concerns finding evidence and using it to explain phenomena, to the satisfaction of experts. When experts around the world agree, based on the evidence and science that goes back over a hundred years one has to be a very special sort of person to think one knows better.

“Puffing insulation into the atmosphere will cause Earth to retain more energy just as surely as jumping out a window will cause you to fall.”

By how much, Dennis? How much warming will occur in the atmosphere by “puffing insulation [CO2]” into it? Identify the “settled science” amount of atmospheric warming for doubled preindustrial levels of CO2 (280 ppm to 560 ppm).

Do you agree with these physicists that the maximum temperature increase for doubled CO2 is about 0.02 °C? If you think they’re wrong, tell us why. What is the correct value of climate sensitivity to doubled CO2, Dennis? What does the settled science say?
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Florides and Christodoulides, 2009http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412008001232“A very recent development on the greenhouse phenomenon is a validated adiabatic model, based on laws of physics, forecasting a maximum temperature-increase of 0.01–0.03 °C for a value doubling the present concentration of atmospheric CO2. Moreover, data from palaeoclimatology show that the CO2-content in the atmosphere is at a minimum in this geological aeon. Finally it is stressed that the understanding of the functioning of Earth’s complex climate system (especially for water, solar radiation and so forth) is still poor and, hence, scientific knowledge is not at a level to give definite and precise answers for the causes of global warming.”
—
The IPCC (2013) cited Lindzen and Choi (2011) in their estimates of climate sensitivity to doubled CO2 (560 ppm). They have it at 0.7°C. Are they wrong? If so, why do you believe they are? Again, just how much warming will we get with doubled CO2?
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Lindzen and Choi, 2011http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf“As a result, the climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2 is estimated to be 0.7K (with the confidence interval 0.5K – 1.3K at 99% levels). This observational result shows that model sensitivities indicated by the IPCC AR4 are likely greater than the possibilities estimated from the observations.”
—
See, Dennis, the problem you’re having here is that you assume that we are here “denying” that humans have an impact on the Earth system, or climate changes. We’re not doing that. We’re instead questioning the extent or degree of human impact relative to other natural influences on climate change. You obviously assume that the human impact is significant, perhaps exclusive. We skeptics, on the other hand, can cite thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers that call into question just how sensitive the climate is to CO2 concentration changes because we note that these same papers point out that climate forcing from the Sun, clouds, cosmic rays, volcanic aerosols…still occurs. Natural factors didn’t just stop influencing the climate because the atmospheric CO2 concentration changed by 1/100th of 1% (300 ppm to 400 ppm) since 1900. Natural climate changes are ongoing.

“That’s why you can’t find one single scientific institution or society to agree with you.”

That agree with me about what?

“Science concerns finding evidence and using it to explain phenomena, to the satisfaction of experts.”

At what point were the experts satisfied that we know enough about CO2 climate sensitivity to make projections about future climate, Dennis?

“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” — IPCC TAR (2001) Section 14.2.2.2 Page 774

the problem you’re having here is that you assume that we are here “denying” that humans have an impact on the Earth system, or climate changes. We’re not doing that. We’re instead questioning the extent or degree of human impact relative to other natural influences on climate change.

You can tell yourself whatever you want. What you do here is using aggressive language (“crushes”, “devastating conclusion”, etc) to deliver your point of view that human influence is negligible. This believe has its source in a deep misunderstanding of magnitudes and math (see our discussions about CO2’s influence despite it’s smaller – in absolute terms – increase than water vapor or our discussion about who causes the complete increase in atmospheric CO2, etc).

Having seen your way to argument and hide behind massive amounts of quotes of papers of which you ignore everything that doesn’t fit your agenda, I am not surprised that you believe what you believe.

Above you ask the question you think somehow shows that there is no evidence for the influence of CO2 or essentially where you question that the laws of physics don’t apply until confirmed by experiment.

If we were to decrease CO2 concentrations by 10 ppm (-0.00001)over a body of water, by how much would that body of water cool? Cite the controlled scientific experiment […]

I did that calculation multiple times now and yet you still think that the laws of physics don’t apply over a body of water. The experiments with varying backradiation exist and yet you still think that radiation with a different wavelength somehow doesn’t have an effect.

P.S.: You know most skeptics here aren’t only questioning the extent of human influence. There is a large percentage of skeptics (or realists as they like to call themselves) that is questioning whether CO2 has an effect at all and/or deny that the greenhouse effect exists, because they don’t understand radiative heat transfer. This is making all climate skepticism look like some weirdo fringe thing …

“I did that calculation multiple times now and yet you still think that the laws of physics don’t apply over a body of water.”

It is amazing how you continue to claim the same thing over and over again. You’ve done no such “calculation”, Sebastian. YOU HAVE NO PHYSICAL MEASUREMENTS FROM AN ACTUAL SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT to perform any “calculation”. All you have are modeled values. Assumptions. And you call those modeled values “basic physics” when they don’t even come from anything physical at all. If you don’t agree these are modeled values, or assumptions, then please do provide the physical experiment where these measurements are derived. Since you know and I know they don’t exist, you are again going to claim that you’ve done the “calculation”, and your calculation is “basic physics” anyway. Running in circles is all you’re doing here.

“This believe has its source in a deep misunderstanding of magnitudes and math”

Speaking of magnitudes and math, please identify why you believe this physicist misunderstands the concept CO2 concentration changes heating water, and why you are right and he is wrong about CO2 forcing (<2 W m-2 since 1750) becoming easily overwhelmed by other forcing factors. I asked you this before, and then you failed to respond.
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Dr. Roy Clark:“The increase in flux from CO2 is nominally 2 W.m^-2 or 0.18 MJ.m^-2 per day. The oceans are heated by the sun – up to 25 MJ m^-2 per day for full tropical or summer sun. About half of this solar heat is absorbed in the first 1 m layer of the ocean and 90% is absorbed in the first 10 m layer. The heat is removed by a combination of wind driven evaporation from the surface and LWIR emission from the first 100 micron layer. That’s about the width of a human hair. In round numbers, about 50 W.m^-2 is removed from the ocean surface by the LWIR flux and the balance comes from the wind driven evaporation. The heat capacity of the cooled layer at the surface is quite small – 4.2 kJ.m^-2 for a 1 mm layer. This reacts quite rapidly to any changes in the cooling flux and the heat transfer from the bulk ocean below and the evaporation rate change accordingly. The cooler water produced at the surface then sinks and cools the bulk ocean layer below. This is not just a diffusion process, but convection in which the cooler water sinks and warmer rises in a complex circulating flow pattern (Rayleigh-Benard convection). This couples the surface momentum (wind shear) to lower depths and drives the ocean currents. At higher latitudes the surface area of a sphere decreases and this drives the currents to lower depths.”

“In round numbers, the temperature increase produced by a 2 W.m^-2 increase in LWIR flux from CO2 is overwhelmed by a 50 ± 50 W.m^-2 flux of cold water and a 0 to 1000 W.m^-2 solar heating flux. Over the tropical warm pool the wind driven cooling rate is about 40 W.m^-2.m.s^-1 (40 Watts per square meter for each 1 m/sec change in wind speed). This means that a change in wind speed of 20 cm.s^-1 is equivalent to the anthropogenic global warming heat flux. (20 centimeters per second).”

Seb can comment again once he puts forth his calculation. This is the real problem in climate science: the insistence that the models are fine-tuned and correct. The fact is that most of them are large packages of fudge and convenient assumptions. There’s plenty of literature out there showing that the models in fact suck, to say it kindly.

Everything is derived from assumptions and models. Otherwise we couldn’t say that if you jumped out of the window right now, that you would fall to the ground. After all there has never been a physical experiment that you fall towards the ground when jumping out of that window.

The calculation for 10 ppm changes:
– we assume that for such small changes the change of the effect is linear. If you want, feel free to use the correct logarithmic scale
– you asked about cooling, so the change in concentration is from 400 ppm to 390 ppm (which is a 2.5% decrease)
– the average amount of backradiation over the ocean has the value A W/m²
– CO2’s share of the amount of backradiation is B%

That’s all you need to calculate the change of backradiation from a 10 ppm decrease: C = 2.5% * B% * A W/m²

Depending on the input variables you get some amount C W/m² which you can use to calculate how much warmer the surface has to get or in the case of a decrease in backradiation how much colder the surface will get. While the surface temperature is adjusting the body of whatever material will either lose (ppm decrease) or gain (ppm increase) energy.

No, we actually have physical measurements for how much heating occurs in the ocean from the Sun’s radiance during a diurnal cycle. For example:
—http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrd.50786/full
“…[D]aytime skin effect was strongly influenced by direct solar illumination and typically had a mean of 0.5 K in the morning that decreased to 0.1 K by midday…..[D]aytime solar heating stratifies the temperature profile of the surface. With this in mind the negative skin effect results from two separate processes: (1) intense daytime solar heating overcomes the net upward longwave energy flux and warms the skin, or (2) the right combination of low wind and solar heating creates a warm layer of water above the floating thermistor.”

ftp://mana.soest.hawaii.edu/pub/rlukas/OCN-MET665/fluxes/radiative/Ohlmann%20etal%20Part%20II%202000%20JPO.pdf
“Radiant heating is the largest term in the heat budget for the WWP [Pacific warm water pool] and is unique in that it acts beyond boundaries. In situ irradiance data recorded during TOGA COARE indicate that between 60% and 90% of the solar energy reaching the sea surface is attenuated within the top 10 m of the ocean (Ohlmann et al. 1998). Such a discrepancy in solar transmission can result in a radiant heating rate difference of more than 0.12 C /day for the 10-m layer (based on a climatological surface irradiance of 200 W/m-2)
—
We have no such physical measurements for CO2 variation and their effect on water temperatures. So, we have to rely on models and assumptions. Which is all you are doing when you do a “calculation” with assumed values that are not found in a real-world observation or experiment. You also naively and necessarily assume that all other factors that influence water temperatures remain constant so that the only factor affecting water temperature are assumed forcing values for CO2. Sorry, SebastianH, but in the real world of physical science modeled assumptions aren’t good enough. That’s why your claim that you have “done the calculation” is risible.

Yes, Dr. Roy Clark, physicist. Obviously you have no substantive response you could possibly offer to the observation that the less than 2 W m-2 of total CO2 forcing since 1750 would be easily overwhelmed by other natural factors. As I suspected, all you could do is dishonestly make up a false statement that he never wrote (“radiative forcing can not heat the surface”). Always the same, SebastianH. Always the same.

You force me to comment one last time. I linked to an article by Roy Clark where he wrote what I said. “There is no way that CO2 variations can influence the surface temperature” … Paraphrasing here, but that’s his opinion.

There are physical experiments that measured the surface temperature under changing backradiation. Do.you really believe water has special properties that allow it to make the incoming radiation from CO2 non existent?

The world is full of assumptions and models. We assume that the laws of physics are the same everywhere until someone proves that is not the case (and wins a Nobel prize for it).

“You force me to comment one last time. I linked to an article by Roy Clark where he wrote what I said. “There is no way that CO2 variations can influence the surface temperature” … Paraphrasing here, but that’s his opinion.”

You’re exposing your own dishonesty yet again, SebastianH. You did not claim that he wrote “there is no way that CO2 variations can influence the surface temperature.”

Instead, you claimed he wrote “radiative forcing can not heat the surface”.

There is a world of difference between those two statements.

That is what you do again and again and again: fabricate stated positions that others haven’t written so you can marginalize them. It’s habitual. And sick.

Cut the BS, Seb!
The number of skeptics who deny CO2 having an effect is not a “large percentage” and is in fact tiny. If you want to make such idiot claims, feel free, but do so at your own site. With the climate science brilliance you seem to fancy having, your site would certainly be a smashing success and you probably would even become the new authority on the subject. The real fringe on the subject are the alarmists who model projections are already way beyond the realms of observations.

According to the adjudicatrix, not a single hand was raised in response to any of the questions.

These were the six questions.

1. Does climate change?

2. Has the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased since the late 1950s?

3. Is Man likely to have contributed to the measured increase in CO2 concentration since the late 1950s?

4. Other things being equal, is it likely that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause some global warming?

5. Is it likely that there has been some global warming since the late 1950s?

6. Is it likely that Man’s emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have contributed to the measured global warming since 1950?

At a conference of 600 “climate change deniers”, then, not one delegate denied that climate changes. Likewise, not one denied that we have contributed to global warming since 1950.

One of the many fundamental dishonesties in the climate debate is the false impression created by the Thermageddonites and their hosts of allies in the Main Stream Media (MSM) that climate skeptics would answer “No” to most – if not all – of the six questions.

That fundamental dishonesty was at the core of the Cook et al. “consensus” paper published last year.

Since you obviously know very little about the positions of others, and instead you have been caught dishonestly making up up false statements and then attributing them to others many, many times, perhaps you could humble yourself a little and assume that you don’t know all there is to know about the “masses” who comment here and where they stand on issues.

This occurred while CO2 concentrations increased from 355 ppm to 395 ppm. Why do you think it is that those 40 ppm did not increase the greenhouse effect, Dennis?

Have you found the “correct” value (i.e., the “settled science”) for how much warming we’ll get when CO2 is doubled to 560 ppm yet, Dennis? What does the “settled science” say?

“Earth has retained more energy: equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima bombs every day.”

What blog are you reading that from? SkepticalScience, I presume. According to the IPCC, the 0-2000 m layer of the ocean has warmed by 0.09 C since 1955. It’s not even detectable on a graph of ocean temperatures:

Kenneth, seeing that “400,000 Hiroshima bombs a day” silliness once again is quite amusing. I don’t know who originated that, but it’s an old al gore babbling-point, so its reappearance hints that any conveyors of said might be “graduates” of one of al’s official “how to be an obnoxious climate jerk” classes.

It’s also pretty easy to back-construct how that number was generated – and it’s quite obviously a situation where the normal way of expressing things wasn’t very scary… so a new unit of measure had to be invented to make something trivial sound like something dangerous. It’s the old trick of in-a-vacuum quoting what seems like a large number – but which, when put into proper scientific context, is pretty trivial.

Some years back when that “400,000” canard appeared, I did a quick back-of-the-envelope (literally) calculation, and then put it aside for moments like this.

If you treat the Earth as being a sphere with an areal cross-section, and then just use the rough number for areal solar insolation of about one kilowatt per square meter, you find that the total input of solar energy to the earth in a “day” (period of time that is 24 hours long) is 1.11E+22 Joules.

The “Hiroshima bomb” yielded the equivalent of 12.5 kilotons of TNT, and thus had a total energy of 52 terrajoules (5.2E+13 Joules).

So “400,000 Hiroshima bombs” equates to 2.08E+19 Joules.

Do the division with respect to the total daily solar insolation, and the “400,000 Hiroshima bombs” actually as a fraction is 1.87E-3 of the total daily solar insolation. Converting that into a percentage yields 0.187%. That’s close enough to make it clear – that’s the old claim about “CO2 radiative forcing” being an increase of 0.2%.

Not only is “0.2%” trivial – it even SOUNDS trivial. Hence the need to invent that new unit of measure.

(BTW, using this new unit of measure, the total daily solar insolation onto the Earth totals some 213 million “Hiroshima bombs.” Run for your life!)

And we did the math a few posts earlier … Do you remember Kenneth? How many Joules is 0.09 C since 1955? Something in der order of 2*10^22 Joules? That’s around 5×10^9 kT TNT equivalent. Hiroshima had 20000 kT TNT, so we get 250000 bombs … Close enough

Yes, I “remember” that you attempted to “do the math” earlier and came up with a forcing that was wrong by more than a factor 10. But apparently you have no problem embarrassing yourself yet again:

—

SebastianH Calculation: “If the entire ocean warmed by 0.09 C this would equal 5.5803*10^24 Joules or roughly 20 times the amount I mentioned. The average depth is 3688 m, so 10 times the amount maybe? So 4.7 W/m² during that time period?”
—
Levitus et al., 2012: “The heat content of the World Ocean for the 0–2000 m layer increased by 24.0 ± 1.9 × 1022 J (±2S.E.) corresponding to a rate of 0.39 W m−2 (per unit area of the World Ocean) and a volume mean warming of 0.09°C. This warming corresponds to a rate of 0.27 W m−2 per unit area of earth’s surface.”

—
Considering the 0-700 m layer cooled by -0.9°C between ~1000 CE and 1800 CE (a change 10 times greater than what occurred 1955-2010 of 0.09°C), what heating source could have caused such a heat/temperature loss…Hiroshima bomb-wise? And did that same heating source that caused the -0.9°C Hiroshima bomb loss cease to be a factor in the tiny warm-up since that time (1800 CE), or do you believe that particular source only causes (dramatic) cooling, but not (modest) warming?

thank you for deleting a whole thread up there. I’ll stay away from commenting from now on as you apparently have no need for those comments and want to stay in the magical skeptics wonderland with those cherry picked quotes, etc

I looked in the Bin and see none of your comments have been “deleted”, SebastianH. Sometimes people have to be patient before leaping to conclusions about how terribly they have been mistreated. Are you really going to leave us now?

Indeed the earth accumulates energy and sequesters it safely away via life. This sequestering is for a indefinite time and it is only temporary. The energy ends up as peat, coal, all that deep ocean sludge (vast, billion tons, of accumulated dead plankton, fish scales and other small dead animals and plants that once lived closer to the surface). Subsea decomposition components may also go to making methane clathrates.
All of these processes and many more ensure that any excess solar energy is safely stored away in processes that, for a limited time, keep them stored but if required available for some lifeforms.
So yes, life on this planet ensures that the energy balance of the planet is never perfectly balanced but that unbalance is perfectly natural utilized. Life does this because this planet has passed through periods of energy deficits called ice-ages when the ability to repurpose this store of energy at a premium.

Around 3 billion years of Life and Nature, that is all there is, and man is part of that process!. Only those with a propensity for alarm, and a short term view, would consider this process as dangerous.

The scientific method is what produces the science published in peer-reviewed journals, reviewed, verified and accepted, or rejected, by the global community of scientists, as represented by the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science etc etc etc.

It is not defined by philosophers, self-anointed gurus or people on blogs.

Climate science is complex and the conclusions demand the consilience of many lines of evidence. One paper in physics or chemistry or geology or biology won’t do it.

Science produces knowledge and when the evidence is strong enough we call it a fact. Facts give is our best view of reality.

The greenhouse effect is what makes Earth habitable for humans. The basic science is well understood. More CO2 means more warming: Fact.

The increase in greenhouse gases accounts for the increase in warming. All of it. Nothing else does. Until someone shows otherwise, that is, to all intents and purposes, a fact.

Peer review publication is NOT and has NEVER been part of the real scientific method. It is a journalistic methodology, subject to all sorts of scamming and fabrication and pal-review. It produces zero proof that a paper is actually correct or not.

The very FACT that you don’t know that, shows just how little you know about anything to do with science.

In science correlation does not equal causation, consensus does not equal correctness, and publication does not equal quality of purpose or results. As science is just a human construct, is not infallible! Science offers NO facts, only approximate truths and thus many more questions.
Only a huge bubble of hubris would consider that science has settled any question satisfactorily, and certainly the ‘science’ of climate is nowhere near being settled.

For instance there is NO provable method of assessing how and why clouds form, are maintained in the sky, and dissipate. A provable method that from atomic/molecular scale all the way up to global proportions show how the energy within cloud structures vary, show how and why they form exactly where they do and not, say, half a mile away.

Science is all about verification and validation. Slowly inching closer and closer to the truth from verified measurements of observations using validated methods.
So, with that said, where, Dennis, is the verified and validated observations proving that CO2 causes uncontrolled heating of this planet’s lower atmosphere?

The science is settled. According to the global community of scientists. Read the declarations on the websites for the RS, NAS, AAAS.

You need to produce the paper(s) to show otherwise. As you would to “disprove” plate tectonics, evolution etc etc etc … scientific waypoints that changed the direction of scientific thinking, the paradigm.

“The science is settled. According to the global community of scientists. Read the declarations on the websites for the RS, NAS, AAAS.“

Back in 1975, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that global cooling — the next ice age — could be on the way “within the next 100 years.” They also concluded that they don’t know what causes climate change to occur.

“[T]he mechanics of the climatic system is so complex, and our observations of its behavior so incomplete, that at present we do not know what causes any particular climatic change to occur. What we cannot identify at the present time is how the complete climatic system operates, which are its most critical and sensitive parts, which processes are responsible for its changes, and what are the most likely future climates. In short, while we know something about climate itself, we know very little about climatic change.” — NAS, 1975

They produced a graph that showed the Northern Hemisphere had cooled by -0.6 C since 1940, as shown here:

“Because of the large and still uncertain level of natural variability inherent in the climate record and the uncertainties in the time histories of the various forcing agents (and particularly aerosols), a causal linkage between the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the observed climate changes during the 20th century cannot be unequivocally established.”

Dennis, what do you think changed between 1975, 2001, and now? Do we really know all there is to know about how and why the climate changes, and that CO2 is what causes temperatures to rise and fall — and that all the other “natural” factors that used to cause rapid and dramatic warming and cooling have ceased having an influence on the climate? If so, why is it that the IPCC still can’t narrow the range of estimated temperature changes for a doubling of CO2? They still don’t know how sensitive the climate is to CO2. So how did the value for climate sensitivity to CO2 become a “fact”?

And what is the “correct” climate sensitivity value? Is it 0.02 C? 5.0 C? What does the “settled science” say? Do you know?

“Are you saying science has moved forward and you are rooted in the past?”

No. I am saying that the NAS statement from 1975 indicating that “at present we do not know what causes any particular climatic change to occur” and “we know very little about climatic change” has not gone away despite more recent claims of “high confidence” that we know all there is to know about clouds, cosmic rays, solar irradiance variations, the paleoclimate, ozone, CO2…spouted by those who claim the science is “settled” and that if we believe something to be true, it is therefore a fact.

Obviously, you are not the least bit skeptical about the beliefs you ascribe to. No critical examination of the evidence has taken place.

You are conversing with people here who have spent years immersed in the climate debate, who are quite familiar with all the “arguments” and glib “answers” contained on the “400,000 Hiroshima bombs!!!!” websites. Did you really think you could point us to Gavin’s blog (RC.org) and we would discover the “truth” for the first time?

Dennis forgets that Creation and static tectonic plates were the universal consensus, and that it took a single skeptic (and many funerals) to change all that. More recently (1970s and beyond) we were all told that the low-fat high carb diet was the right way to go – there was broad consensus – today, it is unraveling and turning out to be the greatest scientific blunder in human history.

These sites are activist and not about science. They misuse science to give their arguments weight. they cherry-pick data, use science that is flawed and has more holes in it than Swiss cheese, insist they are always right and that the science is fully understood (it’s not), cling to the claim that there’s a consensus, and they refuse to discuss – they demand the matter be closed. The people who go there and who are allowed to participate are only those who agree. Sorry, that’s not what we do here, which is what agitates them. They’re dogmatic and they’ve long squandered all respect and credibility.

They’ve been caught doing so many wrong things and making so many ridiculous claims that they will never gain any respect from the rest of us.

At our right side bar here you’ll find hundreds of papers that dispel all their silly claims.

If these websites are your only points of scientific reference then it is no wonder that your balance of the scientific view is badly tilted towards the most hubristic. I strongly suggest you reset yourself and look at the less alarmist sites for a more balanced view of nature and science.

Above all please keep in mind that in science there are no absolutes. None!
What is thought to be ‘fact’ today is only a transitional state before it becomes obsolete, or rediscovered with some new insight. We are not masters of this universe or even this planet, we are all merely ignorant bit players stumbling around, misunderstanding the rules.